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Jill and Rick Van Duyvendyk answer all your gardening questions in Garden Talk on 650 CKOM and 980 CJME every Sunday morning at 9 a.m. Here are some questions and answers from the June 14 show:
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These questions and answers have been edited and condensed for clarity.
Q: My lawn looks lush green from a distance but close up it looks brown towards the bottom. What’s going on?
A: Watch for cinch bugs, we’re starting to see cinch bugs all over the place. There’s a nematode for cinch bugs that will go after the larva stage. You can also use Bug-X Out but it kills everything that’s in the lawn, whereas nematodes only go after specific insects
It also could be sod webworms, but you see patches more with them. It could also be red thread disease if you see lines. The only way you get rid of that is increase nitrogen. If you already use Groundskeeper be careful if you use them together because the sulfur in in Groundskeeper will make that that nitrogen release really quickly and so you don’t want to burn your lawn.
Q: How do you use alfalfa pellets?
A: Put about two or three cups into a five-gallon pail and stir well and then let sit overnight. In the morning stir it up again. You either pour it strait onto plants or run it through a strainer and then use the leftover pellets around other plants.
You can use it every time you water it if you wanted to but every third watering is fine.
Limp cucumbers. (Submitted)
Q: What causes cucumbers (pictured above) to go limp and die?
A: There are a couple of things to watch for. The picture shows holes in some of the leaves so make sure you’re watering in the morning and not in the hot part of the afternoon or in the evening because then you get fungus and they’ll actually burn a little hole where the water droplet sits.
Also watch for caterpillars. There’s lots of caterpillars out right now.
Q: How should I harvest chives?
A: Scissors is probably the best way to do it and cut them about one or two inches above the ground. The stem will heal up and then it’ll start growing again.
Q: When can I cut back a rose?
A: It is best to do it when the plant is dormant in the first week of April.
As soon as the snow disappears in the spring, give it a haircut all you want and then fertilize it every three weeks from Mother’s Day until around July 15 with a 30-10 -10 fertilizer, and you’ll get tons of growth.
Q: What is eating my cucumber, spinach, Swiss chard and dill plants leaving only the stems underneath the soil?
A: You might have a hornworm. It’s a bigger caterpillar with a little thorn sticking out the end. They will chew until there’s nothing left. You’ll see little droppings on the ground that look like pebbles with spikes coming out of them.
You can spray with BTK, but there’s usually not very many of them so you can pick them and squish them, too.
Q: What is your opinion on seed tape?
A: You have to make sure the tape’s not planted too deep and you’re soaking them long enough before you put this tape into the ground. Some people like the seed tape because it basically puts the plants in a straight line and also spaced already.
Q: I want to reproduce old varieties of apple and crab apple trees. What kind of rootstock do I need?
A: Get Malus baccata or like a native crab or something like that, or you can multigraft onto another apple tree.
Q: How do I grow parsnips?
A: Put them in a bad spot of the garden. They tend to like it a little bit drier, so not a place where it’s too wet. Just like any type of ground crop only water them every once in a while. If you stick them in where you’re watering quite a bit for other plants they’re not going to do as well.
Q: Can I save blue spruce trees that have needle cast disease?
A: Promoting new growth is huge, so make sure they are fertilized. Groundskeeper works really well. Start using a copper sulfate spray around June 1 and spray three times about 14 days apart.
If the trees are really tall mix up a bucket, add a submersible pump, and put it on a wagon or something like that and blast a fine spray into the tree. A hose-in sprayer gets on the outside of the canopy, whereas a fine mist it blows right into it.
Q: When is the best time to split a daylily?
A: In early spring. Marked them in the fall so you know where they are and then in the spring, as soon as the snow disappears, dig them up, split them, and then plant them out.
If you do it in the summertime it won’t be very successful. If you have to move them in the summertime, take a big ball of earth and move the whole ball. Don’t split them.
Q: How do I grow blueberries in sandy soil?
A: You have to use aluminum sulfate to lower the pH of the soil, and then also use a fruit and berry fertilizer. Do that every year to keep the pH to between 5.5 and 6.5, that’s a sweet spot for blueberries.
Q: When’s the best time to prune a Russian olive tree?
A: When they’re dormant, but in summertime you can prune suckers off the base to trim them up. You don’t see Russian olives around any much anymore, they are on the invasive species list because birds spread them into native areas.
Q: My asparagus is skinny, why is that?
A: This year was really weird for a lot of plants with the cold May long weekend. Next year, hopefully, we’ll be back to normal.
Q: How do I get rid of mold in the soil of an indoor plant?
A: Stir up the soil with a little fork once in a while is probably the easiest way. If that doesn’t work, just use just a little bit of hydrogen peroxide, dilute it in some water and just water with that. That’ll dry it all up and not hurt the plant.
Q: How do you get rid of Manchurian elm seeds?
A: A yard vacuum will suck them up. If they’re in your mulch, you will just suck up your mulch, but if you have rock, it works really well.
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